"The Average Cost of a Doctorate Degree
According to the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the average cost of a doctorate degree at a public school in 2008 reached $48,400 each year. Private school tuition during the same year rose to $60,000 annually. A typical doctoral program takes five full-time years to complete, bringing the total cost to $242,000-$300,000 (nces.ed.gov)."

Courts won't let you do that. If you did, they'd force you to pay it back at a higher rate than you normally would and at a faster rate. Your only hope, really, is to die, but that's not always a viable option.

Yeah I remember reading that story and that's definitely not what happened. The guy had cancer and couldn't afford treatment so he pulled off this robbery, hoping that he'd get some kind of care being in jail. Unfortunately, they're only required to provide you healthcare in immediate life or death situations so the guy didn't actually get help. Sure they'll rush him to the ER when the cancer overwhelms his body and he's barely alive, but it'll be too late at that point.

That is so ridiculous :( I'm glad I live in Belgium. I go to an OK university, studying CS and pay only €500/year.
I'm not gloating, I'm genuinely outraged over the situation in the US and think normal tuition (like for any non-elite college) shouldn't be above 1k/year.

The current fees and loan-conditions are nothing less than enslaving the entire future generation of graduates.

Kind of. The deceased's estate is responsible for paying any debt accrued by the deceased and none of those named in the will get a penny before any debts are paid. If there is a balance left(the debts cannot be paid in full by the estate) they do not transfer to the bequeathed parties. However many institutions will contact the family asking for payment due to "moral obligation" etc.

In the US theyre dischargeable after having worked in public service for 10 years with having NEVER been late on a single payment. One day late on one payment and thats gone. Past that death is the only discharge for student loans here - Ive heard stories about terminal cancer patients being denied for even forbearances during chemo.

Can you imagine trying to be a medical doctor? If you fail at any point, you're on the street with 200k+ in debt. And subsidized loans for grad school were a casualty of the whole debt ceiling debacle. You graduate with 350k in loans and 3.2% interest which is set to double thanks to our great congress.

In the UK, you do not start paying off your student loan until you earn above £15000 (going up to £22000 for new students) so if you never earn that much then you've basically had your tuition for free.

But wtf are they seriously protesting over a $1500 raise over 5 years?! Tution has gone up from £3000 to £9000 over here and we only had a few portests before accepting it...(although luckily I'm the last year to get my tuition at £3000/year :d)

It's also because they're already paying higher taxes to subsidize an affordable education, and now that's being attacked. It may not seem like a lot of money now, but it's a bad precedent and leads to more students taking out more and more loans. I'm not naive enough to think that they won't raise tuition again and again if they can get away with it.

well I suppose a small raise now will lead to another and then a big one. That's what happened in the UK. It used to be about £1000/year 10 years ago then Tony Blair introduced 'top-up fee' of £3000, and then they raised it to £9000. So I suppose they are justified to be annoyed but it just seems like it's on a level nowhere near to that of the UK.

Yeah, I saw the same thing happen to the University of California system. It's a bad precedent, this kind of thing should be nipped in the bud. The UK still doesn't have it as bad as the US, but that doesn't mean you should stop complaining!

Fun Fact: People (in general) don't really do much research into things like spending 160K on schooling. Much like the housing bubble. Even after that, when I bought a house, the lenders were still pushing higher loans on me. There is no excuse to understand your own finances, especially when it involves 6-figure costs.

It's an extra shame that we force these decisions on people as soon as (or before) they turn 18. Then only the people who already have parents/counselors who understand finances are really getting the advice they need. Because AFAIK personal finances aren't covered on any of the standardized tests that schools are forced to teach to, so there's little to no chance of learning that in school.

Student debt is student debt ... if you change it, i.e. fill up credit cards or mortgage your house to pay it off and declare bankruptcy, its still there and your bankruptcy is all for naught. There are ways to get out of it, namely dismissal after 10 years of public service, 25 years of 100% clean IBR payments, full repayment, or death. Thats it, you cant transfer and declare.

EDIT - At death the student loans pull first from your estate before whoever you leave your stuff / valuables to. For example, if you saved some money and left 25k to your heirs, but you still owed 25k on your loans, they would get exactly fuck-all.

Once again... you need collateral. You can't just walk into a bank and say I'm gonna need $150K for myself. Can I borrow it? No. Even for a small business loan you need to come in with a business model and something, and that's not even a guarantee you'll get it.

Look, if you feel college is a waste of money that is fine, but it is useful for a lot of people to go to a good school, even if you have to take out loans. College isn't some crazy concept that is indisputably bad to do. Sure, you might be able to find a cheaper one in state, and then you need to weigh going to a much better school vs saving 100k.

Look, if you feel college is a waste of money that is fine, but it is useful for a lot of people to go to a good school, even if you have to take out loans. College isn't some crazy concept that is indisputably bad to do.

Straw man. I didn't say anything like that.

Sure, you might be able to find a cheaper one in state, and then you need to weigh going to a much better school vs saving 100k.

College is not a waste of money and time BUT going into a big debt is a serious thing. If you're gonna get a big loan on your shoulders you have to think it very well and it seems this guy didn't because he is just complaining about it.

Finally, defining what's a much better school is not easy because high research production != quality of education. If what you want to do is research you have to get into graduate school anyway and you can get your bachelor from a "worst institution" and then get an scholarship to get into those schools with big research focus.

Yeah, there are different things people can do, and just because he was complaining about big loans doesn't mean he didn't realize he had loans before going there. I just think its ridiculous to say its always bad to take out large loans to go to a very high ranking college. Penn State is one of the top ten ranked public schools for undergraduates, and it's beyond idiotic to act like paying out of state tuition to go there is stupid. There are pros and cons, just like anything else.

How are you enjoying those "technology fees" and "student activity fees" that they charge regardless of whether you use the equipment or participate in the activities "which are usually not educational".

I am glad to have graduated last year, as there were talks of even more tuition increases in the next few semesters.

Next time someone ever says that, throw the book "Outliers" by Malcom Gladwell at them. It's about how erroneous it is to think that the successful people out there just worked hard and got what they wanted. It's total bullshit.

Or read some Marx. It is much, much easier for those who have money and capital to acquire money and capital. Once you're there, you can afford to keep your prices low and rents high thus preventing others from effectively competing.

We're in the middle of a massive recession caused by greedy pigs on Wall Street, most of whom remain filthy rich despite the damage they caused. Anyone that still believes that hard work results in wealth is retarded, far beyond reasoning with, and unworthy of life.

So you mean the fact that I worked hard to get the right grades, the right experience and the right references to get my job, and then worked hard to be promoted over the lazy bums I worked with, is BS? I worked hard to get where I am...and I wouldn't have had I slacked off. Anyone who thinks they should be able to get ahead without hard work is retarded, far beyond reasoning with, and...yeah, I won't add that last part. I don't think anyone deserve to be dead...guess that's the difference between me and you.

If you knew my exact situation, you probably wouldn't say so. My company has been in a non-stop recruiting phase for my job since the 90's. They've hired hundreds of people to do exactly what I do but only a few dozen have attained my level of success...all of us through hard work. Anyone with a grade 12 education and a reasonable level of intelligence could get into my company at the bottom floor. But working hard, harder than everyone around me bar none, is what got me to where I am now. Most people at my office put in their 9 hours and go home, doing the minimum required during their time at work. Some take on a few extra duties. I took on every single duty that came up and needed to be filled. I found shortages in our systems and designed things to fill them. Sometimes I was able to create the solution myself, other times I simply sent my advice up the chain of command. I took charge when urgent situations came up, I lead committees, I volunteered to represent my local office at conferences, you name it, I did it.

There's nothing "lucky" about putting in 10 times the effort of everyone else. And there was nothing "lucky" about taking the job. Anyone in Canada with a grade 12 education and English language proficiency could've applied for the bottom rung job like I did.

The only "luck" I had was being born with all my faculties so as to be able to complete grade 12. And this isn't just 1 example. I excelled at a few sports because I put in more effort than everyone else. Some people had a natural talent which I did not, but I became as good or better than them because I worked at it. I climbed the ranks of previous jobs as well because I worked hard at it. I have never suffered negative effects from working hard...in school, in play, in relationships, at work. But I have almost always found success from it.

But yes, luck can and often does play a part. But I don't think the fact that some people are unlucky should mean we institute a socialist system where everything is free and those who work hard get the same as the lazy slackers. If the people in my office all got promoted with me despite their lack of work ethic, I would quit. And you'll find in any system where you take rewards away, a lot of people simply stop trying. I refuse to be a victim and be taken advantage of. I'll just go somewhere else.

And therein lies the problem. Institute a system where the hard workers look after everyone else, and you'll find the bulk of your hard workers either stop working or up and leave to where they are appreciated. So my argument stands. I got where I am by hard work. Sure, I'm lucky I wasn't born with ADD I suppose...so yes...there's a modicum of luck. But what put me ahead of others in my field is my work ethic.

I put in very few extra hours so it has nothing to do with non-work-related responsibility. I just actually worked during my scheduled shift.

And you proved my point. People don't have the drive. aka They're not willing to put in the work. So why should I not be rewarded for having drive and a harder work ethic, or why should they enjoy the same benefits I do despite my willingness to do what it takes to get ahead?

Please, explain to me how going to community college for 2 years, transferring to a state school for 2 years (then getting paid to get a masters) and going for something with a promising future is anything other than me controlling my own destiny. By your logic my friends and I MUST be just lucky, because apparently success is only determined by who your daddy is. I guess your English majors were lucky while they were out partying and we were studying. Or they're lucky now while I'm climbing up by working 70hrs/week on straight salary. Not all have to make sacrifices to get where I am, but they don't concern me as it doesn't change my path.

Maybe busting ass and making the good future decisions as well as realizing that hard work is a long-term investment and not everybody is going to give you a blowjob for being a 22 year old college grad with no experience will mean success. Maybe it's hard work + natural skills + persistence. The CEO of Dr. Pepper/Snapple started there as a truck driver 30 years prior.

P.S. The "greedy pigs" on Wall Street are guilty, but only as much as the American consumer. If you don't look at a responsible budget in planning for the biggest investment of your life, you are responsible for your downfall.

However I suppose that is the type of thinking I should expect from somebody who still uses "retard" in a non-literal sense.

Please, explain to me how going to community college for 2 years, transferring to a state school for 2 years (then getting paid to get a masters) and going for something with a promising future is anything other than me controlling my own destiny.

Since that's basically been my path as well, I can tell you that yes we have also been damn lucky. It's making the best of your situation and demonstrating your worth, sure. But if you haven't noticed the people struggling around you, the smart, persistent, talented people who got the short end of the stick one way or another, then that's a personal failure right there.

For example, I did really well in classes and did research at the same time. I know for a fact that if I hadn't had to work at the same time, my research project would have been better. There's just nothing I can do about that, there are a limited number of hours in a day, and I had to spend 8 of them serving coffee instead of in the lab. So it goes.

I also know that if I hadn't been living with someone very supportive at the time, I wouldn't have done as well as I did. Again with the hours in the day thing, if I'd had to grocery shop/cook/clean/drive for myself all the time, I would have had less time to study and work. Tragically, there was even a control for that thought experiment... a woman I studied with suffered the deaths of both her boyfriend and her father in the same year. She was just as smart and motivated as I was, but she didn't pull the same grades that year.

And that's not even going in to all the advantages I had over my cousins, who are just as smart, but grew up poor, non-white (I pass for white, they don't), with shitty schools, surrounded by gangs, and with parents so fucked up that my sister and I didn't feel safe staying the night there. It would be pretty shitty of me to say that the reason I'm doing better than them is only because I made better choices or worked harder. These are just examples that, I hope, will convince you to look back at your life and acknowledge the people and situations that helped you along your way, and maybe show some compassion for other people's stories.

Please, explain to me how going to community college for 2 years, transferring to a state school for 2 years (then getting paid to get a masters) and going for something with a promising future is anything other than me controlling my own destiny.

Because not everyone can afford going to college and not everyone qualifies for the financial aid. You did get lucky. Are you as lucky as the heir to a millionaire's fortune? No. But you're more lucky than a lot of kids in this country.

The fact that you're able to afford college at all means that yes, you got lucky. Most people's parents aren't rich enough to foot that bill, financial aid or no, and that's for those whose parents aren't completely unhelpful (dead, drunk, etc).

I don't doubt that you busted your ass, but I do doubt that that was all it took to get to where you are.

People will just take from it whatever confirms their biases. My cousin recommended it to me and said it showed that if people just put in 10,000 hours of work they could master anything. Turns out that was just one small part of the book and the rest was about how people are largely at the mercy of outside forces...

there are successful people who work hard that came from the shittiest of roots-there just realistically arn't many of them. iv never read the book, but u cant discount everyone with poor people mentality

It has to do with incentive and having the right answer at the right time in the marketplace as well. There are successful people that are 'trust babies' to be sure, but once you destroy the incentive for profit through work, knowledge, creativity, and ambition, you destroy the standard of living for the entire society. The failure of communism is evidence of that - and even in the USSR, there was a privileged class of 1000 or so people in the upper levels of Gov't that had access to Western goods and medical care.

It has to do with incentive .. as well. [O]nce you destroy the incentive for profit through work, knowledge, creativity, and ambition, you destroy the standard of living for the entire society.

However, you don't in any way need the kind of inequality where the wealthiest 1% is hundred times richer than the bottom 10% for that incentive to be there. You could have a maximum [picks random numbers], say, 10:1 proportion and, in combination with people's thirst for status, professional recognition, the pride in one's work and the admiration of others, the human psyche would work in such a way that those who are ambitious would be just as ambitious as they are now.

Just look back into history. Back in the 50s, when even under Eisenhower the top income tax rate was 90%+, the difference in income between the top layer and the bottom layer was much smaller than now. It was still a decade of hard work, high hopes, professional pride and almost unprecedented material and technological progress.

Some examples:

In the 50s, under a Republican President, in a capitalist system, the very, very richest, the top 0.01%, earned some 150 times more than the average income of the bottom 90%. Sounds like a lot? By 2006, they earned 976 times as much. Did it make them harder-working and more productive?

In the 1950s, the top 10% earned, even including capital gains, some 33% of the national income share. By 2006, it was 50%. Was the top 10% in the 1950s less motivated, less hard-working, than now?

In the early 80s, under Reagan, the top 20% earned some nine times as much as the bottom 20%. By 2007, it was fourteen times as much. Did it make them more incentivized?

Et cetera. Some level of wage difference between top and bottom (on top of other, real incentivizers such as pride, status etc) does provide an extra incentive, and it's a choice whether to approve of it because of that. (Even communist countries had some differentation, as you point out.) But you still heard the incentive argument used as a defense of why taxes on the top 0,1% or top 1% should not be raised, for which there really just is scarce logical justification. Earning 1,000 times the average instead of 100 times the average isn't going to make most people work a lot harder, and it certainly won't make them work 10 times harder.

Counterpoint: when taxes peaked, the US was at a technology supremacy. There was no "outsourcing" because no one else could do the job. No other nations had the know-how. With the loss of that lead, outsourcing became viable and taxes had to be lowered to keep businesses in country.

Yes, that means the businesses were greedy. But a greedy business that ups and leaves still means lost tax income from the business and all it's employees who now find themselves sucking on the government teet.

There it is! The comment likening free education to communist nations like the USSR. You heard it here first redditors! Stop the spread of communism by limiting access to higher education! HURRY BEFORE THE REDS TAKE OVER!!

Um, no. You fail to understand both history and the economic concept of profit incentive.

Most of human history people worked because if they didn't they would die. Sometime around the agrarian revolution a significant number of individuals began to outproduce the manhours required to survive, meaning they had a surplus they could sell. At this point the only reason to work longer then they absolutely had to was profit incentive, the idea that they could use the surplus to either reinvest in their business and make things easier/grow bigger surplus or buy things outside of the necessary barter routine.

Now if you want to argue about successful syndicalist societies then you have somewhere to go, but you are just dead wrong as is.

At this point the only reason to work longer then they absolutely had to was profit incentive, the idea that they could use the surplus to either reinvest in their business and make things easier/grow bigger surplus or buy things outside of the necessary barter routine.

It is sad how we have regressed to the point where working 18 hours a day is required to survive if you are lower class.

But what is best for a hunter-gatherer society is not necessarily the best for a more modern, industrialized, and diverse society. And an "example from the past" is the same thing as "appeal to tradition" if it fails to address the differences between now and the past.

1) The economic system of the USSR bore slightly less resemblance to Marxist communism than it did to the economic system of Munchkinland.

2) That system didn't fail because it was incapable of driving growth or unsustainable (it was egregious in almost every respect, but no country in the western world including Great Britain at the dawn of the industrial revolution) has experienced as extensive or extended growth as the USSR between 1920 and 1970. It failed because they were at once forced but also in no way reluctant to bankrupt themselves with frankly insane military expenditure.

What he is saying is that the promise constantly made that 'work hard and you can get rich/successful' simply isn't true under most circumstances. The idea of capitalism, that just about anyone can get rich if they try, just isn't true.

There is WAY too much in the way of preventing someone from doing so. Historically, and especially now with how the economy has been progressively circling the drain for the last 15+ years.

Too many people going for psychology, English, and arts degrees. How many Starbucks do we really need people? Try something a little more challenging and of benefit to the country. For example: Sciences, engineering, medicine,........ Most of these will land you a decent job.

To be fair college is expensive to everyone. Even my rich ass friends asked to split a room with me, I got it easy I suppose I got my Army Scholarship so I have very little college debt. I'm missing about 1000 a year with my other scholarships.

You've got it slightly wrong. The ones who benefit are the very rich, yes, but also the very poor. It's the middle class in its entirety which gets screwed. If your parents make 30K a year, you're getting a shitload of grants and federal funds to make up for it. The UC system in California raises its scholarships with every tuition hike. The rich kids whose parents are millionaires aren't affected much either, because what's a few extra grand. It's the students in the middle, with parents whose salaries range from 70k-300k(ish) who really struggle and are hit hard by the hikes, because they feel every increase, and their parents aren't necessarily helping them out with college. I couldn't stand the students who had 100% of their tuition, housing, meals, books, etc. paid for complaining about the tuition hikes when it was us in the middle class stuck with the actual bill, for us AND them.

this is true, but I think there are plenty of those same poor who don't make it to college simply because they can't afford it, and they don't get one of those full scholarships to attend it either. I mean... how exceptional are the majority of college students? Yet, many people still get to go to college by working something out with their money. Some others simply can't do that.

I guess it might vary from location to location. My experience was that just about anyone who wanted to go to college could go, regardless of financial status. I went to UC Riverside, which is in a lower income area in Southern California, and we had a fair number of students who weren't even in the country legally who were able to attend...their parents truly had nothing, but because they qualified financially they were fine.

The students I saw who decided not to attend a four year all did so because their parents' income placed them out of the federal grant range, and they didn't want to take out massive student loans to go to college, so they went the community college route, or just went into the job market right away. Like I said before...it's a pretty easy decision to go to college when the government is taking care of 100%+ of your expenses (I say that from having spoken to so many low-income students at UCR who were actually making money by going to school because their grants exceeded their expenses)

Not the richest one though. I hope none of you guys get get sick or injured before retirement, its a short road from working poor to homeless. But hey, if youre homeless you get heathcare, so we all have that going for us.

Right right, and I'm not necessarily against free school, but you do realize that the countries that have free post-secondary education are taxed incredible amounts. ( Again, merely pointing out the fact, not saying it's a good or bad thing)

Don't want to get into a huge anti-capitalistic debate 'cause fundamentally, I don't think it is the problem, it's neo-liberalism that is the problem imo, always claiming it's ok to give money to private entities but not ok to invest in it's own population.

The USA could have bought the banks instead of giving them that much money last year, a bill bigger then the last 50 years of NASA, so yes the USA taxes less and so people pay more for schools, but where is the logic when all the states money goes into foreign wars and in helping companies survive but not helping the people to.

A weird value code in this country seems to allow companies to survive more then individual through health care, doesn't make no sense to me!?

Btw, I love Obama but I think he got it wrong when he talks about creating jobs.

Creating jobs always implies a government helping small business survive, even if they are not competitive. It goes against socialist logic because it invest public money in private parties, and against capitalistic logic which simply states that these companies should die. We have to stop helping the private and start helping the public, we'll see we have money and everybody will be taken care of (want to create jobs? educate your kids!!! want healthy workers? heal them!!!)

Yet I feel the USA if pretty far away from achieving any of the those goals. No offense, but sometimes I shudder when I think of what my life would be like if I had been born in the USA instead of Canada. I know our schools are expensive, but I am nowhere near 100k in debt like some of my American friends.

The idea was never to save money. The idea was for people outside the government that worked in corporations to get as much money as possible from the government, and the government complied. As it stands, we in the US pay more money in health care than any other country in the world, but we have some of the shittiest health care of all subsidized countries. We could bump taxes, make all health care free, and you and I would see a likely decrease in the total amount of money we spent....and come out in better health.

But nope. It isn't about us.

We're the United States of Corporations. For the corporation, by the corporation.

Well, I can't really comment on that since I don't know what job cuts you're talking about, I'm not from the USA and only know a little bit about your politics, but in general theory, creating a useless job will cost more to the state then paying them to stay at home and be monk or musicians ;)

The unemployment rate didn't have anywhere else to go. I believe keeping up with supply/demand had evened the unemployment rate to where it is. Not knocking the government, but not really giving them credit, either.

More reason to protest against tuition hikes. Right now, Quebec is facing tuition hikes, even though we pay a load in all forms of taxes because of the idiots that govern us and their tax breaks on good years which prevent covering the bad ones.

Why would they? The bank gives them taxpayer-guaranteed loans that they don't have to start paying back for years and that's the way the banks and universities like it. It doesn't impact the students' bottom line until they are out of college and by then the debt has already been racked up.

That makes me so depressed. I remember having UW as my top choice school a few years ago but the tuition was too damn high. I wish as well that students all over the US could protest these out of control prices and show, even just to bring attention to the insane amount of money one person has to pay for their education per year.

Funny, here it's about 3k a year going up by 1.7k over 5 years. That's how the strikes/protestation/riots started. Instead of calmly discussing with the government and gainging people's trust (easy win), my fellow students went full retard, whining about capitalism in the most social oriented region of North America. I've been facepalming for 2 months now.

Well that's fine because you want to pay that much because you guys think democratic socialism is communism. So let us complain about our tuition hikes without being ridiculed because we can and we control our country.

The rise in prices is because it's easy to get a 50k loan (at age 18) and the universities know this and are willing to charge the maximum amount that students can get loans for.

Universities are in the business to make money. They want to compete against other schools, become biggest and best in the land, administrators having CEO salaries, they have no qualms in charging you every penny you can borrow.

You can't get a mortgage for 50k these days without jumping through massive hoops, and now that student loans are as easy to acquire as in-store-credit cards plus you can't declare them on bankruptcy (thanks a lot baby boom generation), it's a self destructive system

There are a lot of people protesting in the US. Unfortunately a lot of people, including most of the media, tend to applaud police crackdowns on these protests. They're too quick to label the protesters as rioters or other sorts of miscreants even when they're completely peaceful.